When determining guilt or innocence, it’s easy to assume the task would be simpler if the accusers could read the alleged criminals’ minds. But in upcoming sci-fi film Extracted, going too deep into the mind of a junkie shows that memories aren’t always what they seem.

“What’s so interesting about memories is that they feel real, there’s a reality to them, but really they’re very, very fragile,” Extracted writer/director Nir Paniry said in an interview with Wired. (The trailer premieres above.)

In the film, an inventor named Thomas Jacobs (played by Grimm‘s Sasha Roiz) creates a way to observe what happens in people’s memories from within their brains. But when he goes inside the mind of a heroin addict and accused criminal (I Am Not a Hipster‘s Dominic Bogart), he gets trapped and becomes unsure how to escape.

When he thinks he’s found an out, he realizes he might have to traverse the memories of a man whose recollections are crumbling and unstable.

The director’s first feature, Extracted — which premieres March 10 at the South by Southwest film festival — was made for very little money. Paniry won’t say exactly how much, but pegs the price at less than $1 million. During development, he and his producers rewrote the script to ensure the project would be affordable.

The director said he hopes his movie joins the ranks of low-budget sci-fi films that relay complex concepts without tons of special effects or mammoth sets.

“Films like Primer, those are films that I really believe that when you watch those science fiction movies — yes they’re low-budget and yes they have limitations — but you can sense that the filmmakers really love that story,” Paniry said. “I wanted to do something in that vein.”

That could be why the director chose to go with such a script-flipping ending. We won’t spoil it, but it’s the kind of Christopher Nolan-esque twist that is meant to make viewers question everything that’s happened in the entire film.

And don’t ask Paniry — he can’t tell you either.

“I don’t even know if I have my own opinion about what happens at the end,” he said.

Check out the trailer for Extracted above and an exclusive clip below, also premiering on Wired, in which Thomas explains his memory-extracting technology — and what could possibly go wrong.